Reading in Reykjavík

I got so caught up in the story that I decided not to stop to write notes about parts 5 and 6 and instead went on to finish the story. Therefore I don’t have any notes or thoughts on future developments, but here are my conclusions: While the main thread of the story is predictable – man commits crime, man tries to avoid suspicion, man breaks down and confesses – the parts that flesh out the narrative are not all so predictable. What really makes this such a brilliant story is not the main story itself but the characters and their interactions and dialogues. Each character is unique and separate and there is no danger of ever getting them confused with each other. Raskolnikov, for example, is brilliantly conceived, and one can easily see how someone with his pride, arrogance and tendency toward depression would be adversely affected by his circumstances and commit a crime. It is equally plausible how he can then be driven to confess by an older man like Petrovits, experienced in applyi...

I’ve taken a long break from the book, but I hope not so long as to affect my memory of what I have already read. I have just a few notes on this part: Svidrigelof is definitely planning something. At first he tells R that he wants to court and marry Dunja, and then when R does not take kindly to that, he changes tack and says he wants to give her some money but will then leave her alone and marry another woman. Then he appears again, listening in on a conversation between Sonja and R. I think he may try to blackmail R, either for money or for help in winning Dunja's hand (he does seem to have honorable intentions towards her now that his wife is dead). As I had guessed (and hoped) Dunja has broken her engagement with Lusjin, and seems to be beginning to fall in love with Rasumikhin, who has proven himself to be a thoroughly decent person. Petrovits has started trying to confuse R into confessing or giving himself away somehow, using psychological methods, and has even described hi...

Things are now getting really interesting. The story is about halfway told and the plot thickens as several turning points are reached one after the other. R seems to be recovering from his fever, but his mind is still in turmoil. The main turning points I have recognised as such are: Sonja appearing on the scene and meeting R’s mother and sister – even though she has done little so far, she is presented in such a way as to suggest that she is an important character; Dunja seems to have decided to break off her engagement with Lusjin, possibly because she has seen that her brother does not condone the marriage, but also possibly because she has realised it would be a kind of prostitution if she did marry him; A second detective, Petrovits, has turned up and like Sametof he seems to be convinced that R is the murderer. It remains to be seen if he “solves” the case, i.e. finds proof and arrests R, or if R’s conscience drives him to confess. Petrovits is clearly a detective of the psychol...

I will make this short, since I don’t have many comments on this part of the book. This part of the novel is an emotional roller-coaster. It starts with Raskolnikov’s wild attempts to destroy all evidence of the crime and his feverish panic when called in to the police station for an interview (over an unrelated matter), descends into pathos when his fever is described, although whether it is caused by real illness or is merely a psychosomatic effect of his shock and guilt after the murder is left up to the reader to decide (probably a mixture of both). Then there is a comic interlude when his prospective brother-in-law Lusjin arrives and both the reader and Raskolnikov discover him to be vain and pompous, both of which Raskolnikov mocks loudly but the man either does not understand or pretends not to. There follows another slip into almost mad despair with suicidal thoughts, followed by a very sad and pathetic scene which nevertheless lifts Raskolnikov’s spirits. Raskolnikov’s despair...

Note that the spellings of the Russian names that I use here are the ones used in the Icelandic translation, and may be different from the way they are transliterated into English. -- Part 1 of the book is about the titular crime and what leads the protagonist, Raskolnikof, to commit it. The leading-up to the decision to commit the crime is the result of a state of mind that seems to be caused in equal measure by hunger, desperation and pride, and possibly also love for his family, that come together in Raskolnikof‘s mind to convince him that what he is planning is the right thing to do. The way Dostojevski describes the reaching of the decision, from the idea (conceived in a nightmare) to the planning to finally making his mind up to go ahead, is nothing short of brilliant. By describing it in a non-linear way, giving it out piecemeal so that the reader has to be on the alert the whole time if they want to fully understand what is going on, he creates tension that feeds into the stre...

Dostojevski’s Преступление и наказание (transliteration: Prestupleniye i Nakazaniye) or Crime and Punishment , was first published in 12 monthly instalments in a Russian literary magazine in 1866. It was almost immediately recognised for its literary value, and has become part of the literary canon, not only in Russia but in the whole of the Western world. This is one of those classics that people who wish to be considered highly literate and well-read will proudly tick off their To Be Read list. I, on the other hand, am reading it because it's part of my mystery-reading challenge. Since it is often mentioned in the same instance as the epic War and Peace I expected it to be much longer than it tuned out to be: only 496 pages in the Icelandic translation, and not with particularly small lettering either. It is divided into six parts and a short epilogue, and I am going to read it in six sessions. I will try to write some thoughts and speculations and possibly analysis after each ...